


we’re already too late if we arrive at all

by Falmarien



Category: State of Grace (1990)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 13:17:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8846560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falmarien/pseuds/Falmarien
Summary: He went to the funeral because he had to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> watched the film last night, and this happened. spoiler alert, if a film this old warranted one. oh and Gary Oldman’s brilliant in it (which really isn’t a spoiler).  
>   
> unbeta’d, all mistakes and awkwardness are mine.  
>   
> title from Poets of the Fall’s ‘War.’

He went to the funeral because he had to.

 

Jackie looked weird lying in that wooden box, clean-shaven with his hair all combed back, nice and neat, and so very still it was just _wrong_. He was the one that was always moving, driving everyone mad, laughing and yelling and punching, and he had been mesmerizing like that, the most alive person he had ever met.

 

And wasn’t Jackie the only one that took him in, no questions asked, after ten years of radio silence? He had felt sick, when he showed him those hands, the very night Terry was back in Hell’s Kitchen; that was pretty fucked up, proper sick stuff, but more than that he remembered Jackie’s laugh, high and mad, gleefully mad, the sound he hadn’t heard for years, and thought about why he was there on the rooftop, what his order was.

 

He had a partner back in Boston, a decent guy named Billy, two kids and a delightful wife and all that, and not actually a bad cop for that matter, which had been good enough for Terry. Billy had come to his apartment before the mission, beers in hand; they watched a game, Billy talked about his dad and his childhood dream of being a pitcher for god knows how long. “Keep your eyes open out there,” he said, at last, before heading home, and that was that.

 

Then Terry was back to the home he barely recognized, couldn’t even walk into the bar without a drink, and Jackie had kissed him and hugged him so hard his bones ached, and followed him out, and they talked and messed around all the way to dawn.

 

(He hadn’t expected it to be this easy; it didn’t make it any easier to bear.)

 

* * *

 

They had fucked once, before; that hardly mattered, Terry had fucked Kate more times than that, before and after. But that’s just the thing you do, isn’t it, when your best friend’s little sister happens to look like that? But it was because of Jackie that he was always in trouble, and that fucking idiot wasn’t even smart enough to get them out, most of the time; he didn’t seem to care that much for consequences, not really, not when he smashed their teacher’s car with a bat when they were thirteen, and just stood there and _laughed_ , not when he punched a guy twice his size because he had bumped into Terry on the streets a bit rough, and ended up with a rib fracture, and not when he got shitfaced as hell for the first time and tried to shoot with his left hand. Terry couldn’t imagine going through that much of shit for Kate, no matter how pretty her face was; most of the time he didn’t even know why he put up with Jackie in the first place, honestly, hadn’t him been trouble from the very start?

 

(But god how was he worth it. Every bit of it.)

 

* * *

 

He didn’t believe it at first when Nick suggested that Frank might have killed Steve. But he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t help thinking, and the more he did, the more it made sense, and he thought about the way Frank reacted on that riverbank, evasive and aloof, to a clearly devastated Jack, and how he had pulled Terry back when he tried to stop Jack from beating the shit out of some poor guy in the pub, as if he _wanted_ Jack to act out, to be that madman he couldn’t afford to be anymore, but also as if he didn’t actually care whether Jack’s gotten himself into any trouble, serious or otherwise.

 

Terry felt sick, but then again, the feeling had long become familiar these days.

 

* * *

 

They got drunk in a church.

 

He and Kathleen found Jack in a church, with a bunch of empty bottles by his feet, and the two of them got drunk in the church.

 

They were talking about how ridiculous they were as kids, and Jackie was laughing like he couldn’t help it, his face so open and bare, eyes wrinkled in the corner in the way Terry remembered with such clarity, the way they used to when the three of them had hidden in the church, sneaking a smoke and snickering like lunatics.

 

When Jackie wiped off his tears, leaving his eyes utterly blank, Terry just had to hug him, even only for a second. This guy was mad as a hat, hot-headed and reckless, profane and a public menace, not to mention definitely an alcoholic, but at that moment, with Stevie gone, Terry realized with a pang, Jackie was the only one left from when they were young and carefree, fucked up without a doubt but still true in a way, still himself.

 

He wondered, idly, if Jackie would be as shattered if it had been Terry. Will you make me a saint, too?

 

(But he wasn’t, and he could never be. He tried to sleep with Kate again after they put Jackie on her couch, but his brain was so fuzzed by all the booze the only sound he could hear was Jackie’s broken sob.)

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Jackie picked him up like nothing had happened, and was drinking and driving at the same time like he hadn’t just passed out six hours ago.

 

Jackie will die, thought Terry, recognizing this simply as a fact, as clear as day even in his splitting headache. Not today, maybe not in a couple of years if he’s lucky, but he will die, either in a car crash or a shootout, and he doesn’t seem to care.

 

(What he did care were his friends, and Terry _had_ to know.)

 

(He wasn’t surprised.)

 

He also knew it was virtually impossible to tell Jackie, that idiot wouldn’t believe it unless he had seen it with his own eyes, and Terry needed to make that happen, to somehow take down Frankie without killing Jackie, because he really didn’t want him dead, because Jackie was too fucking honest for his own good and Terry was the big fat liar, had always been, and however fucked up Jackie was, he had never turned his back on his friends.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t worry about Frankie, man,” Jackie said cheerfully in the empty corner house, a few blocks away from Borelli’s place, without a care in the world, and Terry couldn’t even tell him he wasn’t worried about Frankie, not in the slightest. He didn’t know how far Frank would go, but he got a bad feeling about this. Shit is going to come down quick, everyone’s tense, and Jackie is waving his gun around, pacing, and still drinking, for fuck’s sake.

 

Jackie was looking for Frankie, but Terry had been watching Jackie the whole time they strode through the street; that was why he could haul Jackie back in time, before he had the chance to pull out his gun, and how glad he was to have been able to do that. 

 

He could be there, he could do this. He could be able to keep Jackie alive, before it all came crashing down, before Jackie discovered who he really was and maybe shot him in the head.

 

* * *

 

Of course Jackie told him about the 25 grand—that was outright suspicious, wasn’t it, and Jackie was all he had left, but he wouldn’t believe him, wouldn't fucking _listen_. Terry’d rather have Jack locked up than dead any day. He would get him a light sentence or whatever. He would shoot Frank and have Jackie hate him. He would. 

 

* * *

 

Bang.

 

Bang.

 

_Bang._

 

* * *

 

The skin on his face felt the same, warm and smooth, light stubble scratchy against his palm, but there was no pulse.

 

* * *

 

Terry went to the funeral because he had to, and because he had wanted to see Jackie again, for the last time, even if it was a pale version of him, dimmed and alien. He had also wanted to look Frankie in the eye, to see if there was anything left.

 

(There wasn’t.)

 

You’re not tough, he thought, not unfondly, putting the bottle in Jack’s jacket, the brand Terry had been drinking when he walked into the pub and saw Jack for the first time in a decade. They shared their favorite brand like they shared so many other little things, just not those the most important.

 

You’re mad.

 

(So am I.)

 

 

**END**


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